and time goes quicker
by irnan
Summary: The snow begins, perfectly, wonderfully, magically, on Christmas Eve.


_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** taking place around six-seven months after "the city's aflood"._

**and time goes quicker**

It was snowing outside: the most perfect Christmas weather in at least three years. The snow on the patio was sparkling in the light spilling out of the windows, and the wind sent the falling flakes dancing across James' line of vision, thick wet flakes that would become exactly the right kind of snow for starting snowball fights.

Meanwhile, he was dying an ignoble and dishonourable death by wrapping-paper.

"Really, James," said his mother for the hundredth time.

"It's not my fault," James protested. "It just never turns out right!"

She sighed. "How hard can it be," rhetorically, "to wrap a book?"

"Awfully," James said promptly. "There're corners, and the paper won't lie flat, and it all looks awkward and lopsided and stupid."

"You must have wrapped books before now," she said.

"I have made it a principle in life never to give Remus books for any occasion," said James. "He buys them himself, with his spare cash. Remus needs to be bought Quidditch shirts and silly-looking ornaments and a Muggle lava lamp that glows in the dark."

Mum crossed her arms over her chest. She was wearing the Christmas Dress, the red one, and its long, voluminous folds almost hid her tapping foot.

Almost.

Dad, wise man, had retired to the library after James had ripped the paper off after his third attempt and flung it in the fireplace, cursing a blue streak.

"And Sirius?" asked Mum.

"I did buy Sirius a book once," James admitted. "It was a motorbike manual."

There was the Joan-Potter-Patented-Sigh again. Strange how his Mum could spend his entire school career brushing off every owl McGonagall sent her with a "Oh, Min, you really do like to make a mountain out of a molehill," and then move straight on to the sherry and the mince pies, but when it came to present-wrapping she plainly considered that he had somehow managed to Waste His Life.

It was like the thing about Sirius' parents. She and Dad had been brilliant about it from start to finish, but as far as they were concerned it hadn't actually started until Sirius had fallen through the Floo last year with all his bruises on very prominent display. James had been telling them for years what kind of people the Blacks were - and it wasn't as if they didn't know just how steeped in the Dark Arts the family was - and yet they'd still managed to come out with bollocks like "Lovely child, that Regulus," and "Saw Black today, horrible news about poor Bellatrix being expelled. Might have a word with Dumbledore about it," and "Walburga was saying earlier how happy she is to have both her boys home for a change, I promised her we wouldn't let Sirius stay over too long".

His parents: good people, but not until after you've hit them over the head with a Beater's bat. Repeatedly.

"And are you absolutely sure that it's even a very appropriate present?"

"Muuuuum."

This was not the first time she had asked the question.

"James, really. You and she are stepping out now, that's different."

James rather choked on the idea of calling what he and Lily did together 'stepping out'. They'd walked a few times, sure. From class to class. They'd run more often - from Slytherins, from Death Eaters, once from Remus' furry little problem. They fought and studied and patrolled and snogged in the library, but they didn't step out.

"I know that, Mum," he said, as patiently as if he hadn't been in love with the elusive harpy since he was twelve years old and had several very vivd sense memories of what, exactly, was 'different now' since the summer.

"Then why Charms books? Or any books - honestly, the only one of these things that's even remotely romantic is this thing - this Desire Machines thing - and frankly I do not believe it's appropriate -"

"You haven't read it, Mum," said James patiently. "Angela Carter's one of Evans' favourites." Although, knowing Evans, that wouldn't make it adhere to his mother's idea of appropriate.

"I distinctly recall you introducing me to her as Lily," said his mother, finally betraying genuine irritation.

"I call her Lily," said James. (_In bed_.)

Joan dropped into the armchair opposite him with a frustrated sigh. "James," she said. "Jamie darling. I just want you to understand - we're old, your father and I."

"I," said James, rather blankly. The statement threw him almost as much as the use of that childish nickname, long-abandoned.

"We are," said Joan gently. "We're old, and you might call us set in our ways, I suppose, but Jamie, listen. It works, dear heart. Edward and I. We've been happy, so very happy, although I admit it didn't always seem as if we would be, what with one inconvenience and another. We want the same for you. And for dear Lily."

Well, if you called the Grindelwald war, the deaths of Dad's sister Delia and all Mum's family and the assassination of his Grandad Potter during his term as Minister for Magic by a Dark Wizard _inconveniences_.

James' fingers hovered over Lily's books, deft, callused and scarred already. He had an idea that most seventeen-year-old Muggle boys did not have hands like this: hands that could have belonged to an adult, a grown man who'd had ten or fifteen years to gather the marks on them.

_I give her books because I'm rich and she's not, and like Remus she'll never speak to me again if I spend too much money on her._

_I call her Evans because that's who she is - who we are - the Marauders and Evans, Evans and the Marauders. I've had other girlfriends, but none whom Remus trusted with his secrets, none who'd help Sirius against Malfoy and Avery and then stop him from murdering them both when they'd won, none who'll put up with Wormy's silly tricks and jokes long after the rest of us have run out of time for them._

_I'm not you, Mum. And I'm not Dad, either. I don't know how you fought a war as devastating as that and came out the other side of it_ _with your value system and your class and your beliefs still intact, but I can't do that._

"Mum," he said. "I love you. And I love Ev- Lily. And I promise you, Mum, I swear to you on Merlin's beard and Grandad's false teeth and the tomb of Ignotus Peverell himself, Lily and I are happy. And we're going to stay that way."

_This is what I know: I love her. I love my friends. And I will not cave to any schoolyard bully writ large, now or ever. I've crossed the line, I know it. All the more reason for me to draw one for others._

_The rest isn't important_.

Joan leaned forward and took his hands in hers, and James dropped his eyes from hers to look at them: the wrinkles, the veins, the soft skin like warm leather. We're old, Jamie. He shivered.

"Dear heart," she said again. One finger touched the scars on his knuckles that one of Bella's curses had left there in second year. "You've been so brave."

"I'm a Gryffindor," said James. "And a Potter besides."

Turned his hands, palms up, uncurled his fingers. Her blunt nail traced the lines on his palm: he thought he saw a tremble in her finger.

"A hard life and a short," she said, "and a very great happiness. Oh, Jamie."

She took his head in her hands and kissed his hair gently. He leant his forehead against her shoulder, speechless.

_Memory, Hope and Courage_: the Potter family motto. James used to say that they sounded like three medieval sisters who'd been locked in a tower somewhere and left to starve.

He didn't think he'd be making that joke anymore.

The parlour door opened; they both jumped and looked up.

"There you are," said Dad vaguely, wandering in with the Prophet tucked under his arm. "Jamie-boy, you owe me a chess match. And your guest is here."

James leapt to his feet. "Don't either of you dare call me that while Padfoot and Evans are in the room," he ordered, and ran to fling open the front door for Lily's smiling face.


End file.
